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Arishok

Premium, Traders, and Deeds

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Submitted for peer review.

 

I know it is bad form to create such a long suggestion, but after several attempts, I know of no other way to express the intent and reasoning.

 

  • There is approximately 350 premium players on the independence server.
  • There is 566 mirons on the same server (excluding shops and bodies) which total approximately 56,600 silver.
  • In game premium purchase costs 10s so then currently the in game currency would pay for 5,660 months of premium.
  • So, in theory, there is enough coin in game on Indy alone for 471 years of premium.
  • There is no way in hell I would want money to exchange hands any more frequently if I was the publisher.

 

The truth, I suspect, is further away than that.  This is data we have access to, but what we don't see...  How many players have what currency?  How often does it change hands?  How much money is resting in dead accounts?  How many players actually use silver to purchase premium time?

 

The argument against improving market viability stems from the some of Wurm's player base: "You do not need a market to enjoy Wurm".  This is true, but it ignores human nature, and previous experience in MMOs.  Any MMO that allows the trading of anything amongst players has a market.  Simple, casual web browser MMOs that the developers specifically designed to not include currency - players invented currency.  In MMOs, where bad design rendered in game currency worthless, players have used alternate forms to substitute.   It cannot be wholly ignored.  The fair argument is that enjoyed play mechanics should not be removed at the expense of another "versus" components.  

 

To tackle this, my first suggestion is replacing the manner in which we buy premium.  Instead of using in game currency directly to buy premium at a token, create a new tradable commodity: "Premium Coin".  This is not a unique idea, but one I believe would be beneficial.  This token would be sold in 15 day increments, comparable to purchasing directly from the Wurm shop (5s each).  It would be sold at Traders and the Wurm shop  It can be consumed similarly to sleep powder, granting the player extended premium time.  Additionally, it can be traded amongst players.  Consideration could be made to allow any new player to receive a non-transferable premium coin (15 days) upon reaching a single skill to 20 (linked to tutorial journal).

 

What I imagine this would do, would allow players who have larger volumes of spendable coin to sink them in to traders which would add to kingdom coffers.  This would also allow newer, less skilled players to sell purchase coins from the website, which could be traded on the market for in game currency.  Allowing them to receive a reasonable amount of silver at a slightly lesser expense.  This would require removing the ability to purchase 6 coins, and leaving the minimum at 10 on the website.  The demand signal can, and should, be manipulated in a healthy way through supply provided by traders.  This is something that some wealthier players would want to purchase with coin, but not with real currency, and what poorer players could purchase at a lower investment to propel their game.

 

It is more economical to spend money on two months subscription within the game store, where premium time and silver costs 1.6 euros (currently $1.77).  So, purchasing game time with in game coin grants one month at the cost of two.  As in game coin selling is often as low as .8 euros ($.89), it is just as economical in those cases to purchase both silver and in game coin without ever paying CCAB.  By linking in game premium purchase to tokens, you then can promote that future premium purchases will begin using recent payments to CCAB and not prior purchases from years ago.

 

The next step in this is to only allow traders at starter villages.  This is a non-starter for a lot of players who depend on the traders for upkeep/premium/purchase power, and who have already spent real or in game currency to purchase one or more traders.   If market stability revolves around this mechanic, then I am hard pressed to reason this as anything other than broken.  If the market of selling goods/items were to improve, how necessary would this mechanic be?  Considerations for recompense would be reasonable.

 

If traders were limited to starter villages, I would imagine it would act as a sort of conduit for two events...

1. More deeds will settle closer to starter villages to harvest the traders.

2. Newer players might have more access to coins to throw at higher skilled players, which local deeds would most likely benefit first from their face to face and personal merchant transactions.

 

The goal here is to move around "earned" coin amongst all tiers of players, increase the sink of old coins, and to tie in CCAB for more income at no greater financial expense to the player.  

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Desertion has 155 gold across all accounts on it, and 21 premium players, majority of silver is in accounts that haven't logged in for ages and for freedom servers, deed upkeep (i know plenty of friends deeds with over a gold in upkeep). Saying "there's 566 gold across all accounts on a server" doesn't mean much when theres tens of thousands of inactive accounts with small amounts of money in them.

 

tradeable premium is an idea i like. 

30 minutes ago, Arishok said:

What I imagine this would do, would allow players who have larger volumes of spendable coin to sink them in to traders which would add to kingdom coffers. 

buying premium with ingame silver already adds some of the silver used to the kingdom coffers which splits off into trader funds and random coin funds. trader you could drain 25% back so a 5s premium purchase would really be a 3.75s purchase.

 

30 minutes ago, Arishok said:

silver costs 1.6 euros

thats with paypal isnt it? last i checked 1 gold was like 110 euro, and from what i hear people in sweden its like 95 euro equivalent. fees are the majority of it, especially with small purchases.

 

no personal traders is a good idea too, but the current trader mechanics aren't balanced towards fairness even when theres only starter town traders, they're too easy for someone to farm with alts. would have to rework the money flow from that to something less abusable.

Edited by Oblivionnreaver
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I remember when my traders on Indy did not cover the upkeep for their deeds. With the recent disband trader output has gone up, but there is still nothing for me to buy on the market. I have a small income that does not pay for my premium, so instead I buy a year at a time. If the market is to be fixed, we need players who need the market. I honestly cannot remember my last non sleep powder based trade.

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I am counting on a great deal of that money being tied up in dead accounts.  
 

I hit up traders for a whim.  The off and on times I have played over the last three years I never hit a trader with funds.  
 

I toured all KI starter deeds on a self imposed achievement, and found my first traders with coin.  It was on Xanadu.  It confused me there was no green text when I traded.  So I tried selling something... success!  I emptied my pockets of everything I could sale and walked away with 5.5s.  Never did get the green text warning.   Walked away because I had nothing else to sale and was pleased with the haul.  It is hard to arbitrarily draw lines for players in an open system to make it lean fair.  
 

The fact that there is not a big enough market for skills that only mid and late game player possess is... unfortunate.   I been considering that prices currently are still too high for things.  We don't value mats by quality, only actions and are functions that are typically best suited for early game.  The rate that players collect coins from the wild seems better suited to a lower priced market.  It feels like a bubble that never popped.  
 

The comment about the sleep powders makes me further believe this could work to at least stimulate some early players to buy higher end goods.  
 

I am ready to drop coin finally on building mats, the grind for mats is unpleasant for me compared to what Id rather be doing.  
 

I appreciate both your feedback.   These post are generally good to sort out angles I haven't seen.  

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I buy Premium time through Code Club, I have enough silver to keep my deed up for at least a year or more. I have a few points I want to keep expressing:

 

1: Traders almost never have funds and if they do its at best at beat a few coppers.

2: With all the abandoned crap I would like to see off deed lock picking on Freedom or at least locks decay off deed. Again for those that complain, I already in the past suggested GM Starter Towns with Cavern Shipyards. Deed it or Lose it. Honestly I get tired of all the abandoned crap and having to watch rare ships decay, shove wagons off deed ect. Give deed owners more perms over abandoned stuff on deed, and maybe have a yearly "Clean WURM UP PARTY"!!!!!!

3: I would love to see more unique items so we can spend our shiny coins, more fountain designs, furniture ect, maybe add more to archaeology, its fun, about the best thing in WURM in a long time.

4: Hermit mentality everyone wants a deed, but that is not how medieval life was, I would like to see some kind of Deed bonus the more villagers you add, or some such. A bonus to encourage people to work together.

5: Instead of Impalongs, would love to see more hands on type projects maybe fixing bad roads or undoing bad terraforming, old deed area, fixing or help on canals,  these could be combo events.

 

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You know I have wanted to put together a roving expedition since first coming to Wurm.
 

Plan a sail date and hit a location, set up a bunk house, etc.  stay for a week or two.  Arch the area, hunting to get more freedomers in the killing things game, and restoring areas - removing useless roads, fixing jacked up terrain, etc.   then plan a sail date and start over.  I can be a flake at times so never committed to trying that.  
 

Lack of decaying locks eats at my soul.  
 

There is increasing conversations from players about deeds, and retro alluded to internal discussions as well.  I have a draft similar for some compiled ideas.  Bottom line - better incentives to be near one another, but not beholden to the king of the token.  I believe deeds should be a mid-late game goal, not out of the gate.  System isn't set up for that.  

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@ArthurHawkwing

I, too, buy premium through CC, and even my silver.  I had bought player sold silver once before, but not anymore.  I make well enough money irl to have no qualms about spending it to further enjoy this game.  So the savings are negligible.  
 

On point 4...

Something along those lines I had gleaned from other games, and other players ideas:

 

So, with that, consider everything about deeds remains the same but with the following additions:

- Villages, Towns, and Cities.  
- One a population of a deed reaches x number, a mayor may upgrade the deed to a “Village”

- One time fee, that might also increase upkeep, that is permanent until disband.  
- Villages are allowed a single “focus” from harvest/nature skills (farm, mining, AH, woodcutting, fishing, etc.)

- A focus offer a tangible increase to a category such as XP, action speed, or other suitable bonuses.  
- it scales up over time, and decays once pop drops below minimum.  
- Town is the next upgrade, and offers two focuses: an additional harvest or one harvest and one crafting skill (blacksmith, carpentry, cooking, etc)
- City is final stage.  Considerable cost and pop requirement. (Perhaps similar to founding kingdom) Offers three crafting focuses, and ability to build a monument (war, knowledge, religion, etc).  
- monuments could offer a unique area of effect bonus

- adding a requirement to “fuel” the monument could offer new conflict.   


Cities could be marked on map, and perhaps a teleport location for new players similar to starter deeds

 

These could be optional upgrades while leaving current system in place.  
 

Anyway, that is one example of perhaps encouraging purposeful deeds that aren't one player dust towns.  I cannot sort out a manner that would make sense for kingdom quite yet. 
 

One idea is deeds in a kingdom, linked by highway, could have linked merchants.   

 

Village merchants are like they are now, but town merchants are combined with the villages associated with it, up to city, which link to towns (and by extension) the villages.  Probably would be best to limit them per level.  
 

Since Chaos has no lively markets, and kingdoms aren't allowed on KI,  then this is just a thought experiment.  

If you cant tell, I am off work but cant get in game.  :)

.   

Edited by Arishok
Weird formating on paste. Dunno how to fix.
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I really love your idea of differentiating between deeds, villages, towns and cities! It'd be cool to see the game recognize something like this!

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The original deed system was like this actually. It was shifted to the existing system to provide more flexibility for players

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I found something about that...

 

"The original deed system was a fairly straight forward affair and gave you a limited choice of sizes and either a Homestead or Village style of deed. Distances between deeds had only two options, you could choose between three guard types, and with some deeds you got a kingdom trader contract. And that was it."

 

Spoiler

Background

As Wurm Online develops and evolves and changes being considered such as the possibility of non-premium players being able to use the Freedom Isle's Independence server, Rolf felt it was a good time to look at how deeds work and to spruce up the system a bit.

The original deed system was a fairly straight forward affair and gave you a limited choice of sizes and either a Homestead or Village style of deed. Distances between deeds had only two options, you could choose between three guard types, and with some deeds you got a kingdom trader contract. And that was it.

Much later, on the old Home servers, we added the ability to control a large area around your village and homestead; what became known as the Area of Control. In many ways this was a departure from they simplicity and ideal of the original system where you simply deeded what you needed to control. The problem has been that the way deeds costs were calculated, very large deeds were unaffordable. The AoC was, perhaps, a not very efficient way of trying to balance this out on home servers.

Rolf has been very keen to make it possible for players to create larger deeds so that it is clear what they do or do not control and in the process give far more flexibility in the creation and management of the deed.

However, it was felt that there should perhaps be some restriction on what can happen immediately outside your borders, without it having the potentially land choking effect of the AoC. To address this a versatile perimeter has been added where you can change how close you allow others to build houses and deeds by purchasing more land at a very reduced rate. However, this is NOT fully deeded land. It can still be used by other players should they wish for farming, forestry and so on, but they cannot build a house or plant a deed in this area.

The new system is an evolution of the system that was first brought in when Wurm went Gold, and with the ability to change sizes, hire and fire guards and the possibility of not being limited to square shaped deeds, should bring Wurm that little bit closer to the reality of village life on a hard frontier world.

 

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20100427083505/http://sites.google.com/a/wurmonline.com/new-deed-system/

 

Well, for what it's worth, the idea is to co-exist... those who like the current system, and those who want an environment/opportunity to offer something different without interfering with one another.  I certainly cant predict what players would do.

 

Thanks for feedback!

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That's really interesting!

 

I think if it was tied to number of citizens vs size that could maybe allow both systems to exist?

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I don’t agree with artificially pressuring (via bonuses) people to all clump up on one deed. This is a sandbox. Some people like having a quiet place to be on their own and people like different scenery. If the overall population was much greater, then maybe that would work, but it doesn’t really in the current state. 
 

Perhaps beefing up alliances would be better (perhaps logo/decor, an alliance merchant that can be placed at deeds with shared inventory, or maybe other ideas). My alliance is quite spread out over the server, but we’re pretty active lately and it’s a good balance of space and community. It provides a social aspect of helping each other out on projects and messing around, but also allows you space to do your own thing wherever  you want. 

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Well, I do agree with you, @LionIX  

 

I suggest it is optional; concurrent with deed system as it is.  There is and will always be desire to do what you please in a sandbox, and I agree that the current deed system allows for that.  I would not want to remove that.  
 

If the bonuses were so great that it became a “must have” to enjoy the game... it would be a bust.  But I have noticed players will reach for even the smallest bonuses, even when they aren't sure it even exists.  
 

I can make a castle in this sandbox, but other than ooos and ahhhs, it functionally is no different than another.  
 

The bonuses I have suggested are specific rather that broad.   Similar to perhaps having a type of affinity for a singular skill.   In this way I could create something that could genuinely be unique, and survive on likeminded players.   
 

If I had a mining village, and attracted enough players wanting to grind that skill, perhaps I then could upgrade to a town.  
 

Now we have mining grind and blacksmith.   Maybe we are just dreaming, or maybe we are fueling a kingdom on Chaos.  
 

My agenda is likely a city, I cater to my people to encourage growth - there is an optional goal.  We have many of those already.  
 

I reach the desired number, pay the fee, now we have a monumental achievement.   It has a tangible value.  One that can be sold, or passed down.  It could rise and fall just the same.  
 

I cannot predict what players would actually do in a case like this.  I very much appreciate your feedback, though.  

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